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McCarter adds 11, crucial assist to Hunter
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Audrey Bolinger Rylee Clevenger Ella McCarter
Audrey Bolinger, Rylee Clevenger and Ella McCarter were the honorees of the night, and they wore T-shirts and sashes that said as much.
The Rochester girls basketball seniors reveled in a senior night home win in their honor, but it was their sophomore teammates Aubrey Wilson and Brailyn Hunter who combined for all three Lady Z field goals in the fourth quarter as they beat Northfield 38-32 at the RHS gym Thursday.
Wilson scored 13 points, and McCarter added 11 for Rochester, who finished the regular season 16-6 overall and 6-3 in the Three Rivers Conference.
Sophomore Laney Haupert hit four 3-pointers and scored a game-high 18 for Northfield, who dropped to 13-8, 6-3.
Northfield’s 32 points were the second fewest they have scored in a game. They average 49. Senior Elli Baker, Northfield’s leading scorer at 15 points per game, was held to two.
Solid rebounding accompanied the defense, according to Rochester coach Joel Burrus.
“The big thing tonight was going to be could we rebound,” Burrus said. “Their second and their third chance. We talked about the Peru game (a 51-47 Northfield win in overtime Tuesday), 17 offensive rebounds. Those were the numbers that we were really looking at. … I thought Bolinger set the tone with our rebounding to start the game. I don’t know how many she had, but it seemed like a million, and she was strong with the ball.
“I thought there were some times where the boat started to rock, and we were able to weather the storm.”
Rochester and Northfield will finish in a tie for third in the TRC. Maconaquah will make it a three-way tie if they beat Lewis Cass today. Wabash and Whitko (8-1) will share the TRC title.
Rochester led 29-18 after three quarters, but Northfield went on a 12-0 run to start the fourth, and Camryn Kuhn tipped a Wilson diagonal pass out to the top of the key and raced ahead for the go-ahead layup to make it 30-29 with 3:07 left.
It was Northfield’s first lead since the first quarter.
But Rochester re-took the lead when Wilson used a Bolinger screen to free herself after catching an inbounds pass, and she hit an 18-footer to make it 31-30 with 2:46 left.
After an exchange of misses, Kuhn caught a pass near the baseline, and Bolinger and Jadyn Field quickly trapped her. Kuhn threw an errant bounce pass that Wilson stole, and she raced to the other end for an uncontested layup and a three-point lead.
Teagan Baer found Callie Hoffman in the paint for a layup to make it 33-32, but Rochester took the next 40 seconds off the clock, and after drawing a foul on Baker at the 1:05 mark, McCarter took nine seconds off the clock with her dribble and then found Hunter wide open underneath the basket for a layup that restored a three-point lead.
“It’s amazing,” McCarter said. “Just being with these girls, they’re my best friends. And just being able to play our last regular season home game together, we were all super amped up, and I’m glad we got the win.”
Baker then missed from the right baseline with Bolinger bodying her and grabbing the rebound. Bolinger made one of two free throws with 26.4 seconds left to make it a two-possession game.
Haupert then missed a 3-pointer with 13 seconds left, and Hunter rebounded. She passed to McCarter, who was fouled with 6.8 seconds left. She sank two free throws to complete the scoring.
“It’s the best feeling ever,” Clevenger said. “It’s so sad. It’s heartbreaking to not play here again with everyone. As Ella talked about, we’ve built such a close, tight-knit friend group, and it’s just been really amazing and awesome to have such a small group. I think that’s what really what made it so special, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
Bolinger was asked if she was worried if this game was resembling the Whitko game from Jan. 11. In that game, Rochester led by as many as 10 points in the first half only to have the Lady Wildcats rally to win 49-35.
“No, I didn’t because we still had our momentum, and we still looked like, ‘Oh, we got this. We just need to keep pushing and we need to keep going,’” Bolinger said. “And especially when Aubrey got that little jumper shot to get us back in the lead, I felt like that was really good.”
As they emerged from the victorious locker room afterwards, adoring younger fans made a tunnel that the seniors walked through to roaring adulation.
“So proud of them,” Burrus later said of Bolinger, Clevenger and McCarter. “They’re going to go on to do amazing things. It’s been just awesome to coach these guys.”
Rochester trailed 7-5 in the first quarter before a Hunter trey and a crazy off-balance Wilson putback that hit high off the backboard gave Rochester a three-point lead.
Rochester started the second quarter on a 7-1 run, which included 3-pointers from McCarter and Wilson, but a Haupert 3 cut the margin to 17-13 at halftime.
Leading 20-16, McCarter keyed a 9-2 Lady Z run to close out the third quarter. She drove and found Jadyn Field for a 10-foot jumper along the left baseline and then hit ahead to Wilson for a 3-pointer in transition to make it 25-16. After Haupert flashed in the paint and hit a short jumper, McCarter scored twice in a row on driving bankers.
The lead was up to 11 going into the fourth quarter.
Rochester 38, Northfield 32
NORTHFIELD (32) (13-8, 6-3)
Laney Haupert 6 2-2 18, Teagan Baer 1 0-0 3, Camryn Kuhn 1 2-2 4, Elli Baker 1 0-0 2, Callie Hoffman 2 0-0 4, Emily Miller 0 0-0 0, Faith Krom 0 1-2 1
TEAM: 11 5-6 32
ROCHESTER (38) (16-6, 6-3)
Aubrey Wilson 5 1-2 13, Rylee Clevenger 1 0-0 2, Brailyn Hunter 2 0-0 5, Ella McCarter 4 2-2 11, Audrey Bolinger 1 3-5 5, Jadyn Field 1 0-0 2
TEAM: 14 6-9 38
Three-point field goals:
Northfield 5 (Haupert 4, Baer),
Rochester 4 (Wilson 2, McCarter, Hunter)
Total fouls: Northfield 12, Rochester 5
Turnovers: Northfield 12, Rochester 5
Score by quarters
Northfield 9 4 5 14 – 32
Rochester 10 7 12 9 – 38
